mintCast released 5 podcast episodes: http://www.mintcast.org Linux Mint 12 KDE RC was released Linux Mint signed a partnership with Blue Systems The Cinnamon desktop was presented to the Linux Mint community

News and summary:

Linux Mint 12 KDE was approved for a stable release and should come out either today or tomorrow. Our new partnership with Blue Systems improved the quality of the Linux Mint KDE edition as well as the Netrunner distribution and brought in a significant and predictable source of income, allowing us to welcome an extra full-time developer. Following the feedback we gathered on Gnome Shell after the release of Linux Mint 12, it was clear that despite our efforts with MATE and MGSE, we still didn’t manage to reach our goals and to offer Gnome 2 a valid alternative. Some people were enthusiastic about the new alternatives, others were disappointed. For this reason and in an effort to please a wider portion of our user base, we decided to continue to support MATE and to develop a new desktop called Cinnamon. MATE 1.2 should be out soon. Cinnamon 1.2 is already out and available to Linux Mint 12 users via the repositories. Update Pack 4 should hit the “incoming” LMDE repository in the coming weeks and provide MATE, Cinnamon, GNOME 3 and Gnome Shell to LMDE users. Finally, on behalf of Linux Mint I would like to thank all the people who help us. Whether it’s financially (like the people listed above who donated or sponsored us) or by other means. At the end of last year we lost our main source of income, and since Gnome 3 we lost our main desktop, a vital upstream component… it was tough to get back on our feet but we did it, we’re now as healthy and stronger than before and with MATE and Cinnamon we’re not relying on other projects and inadequate solutions, we now have the technology and resources to take matters into our own hands and to build the components we need to reach our goals and provide you with better releases after each cycle. It’s extremely tough, but even though we’re only half-way there we’re confident and your support, your feedback, and the trust so many of you have in us is extremely motivating. Reaching the #1 spot in the media and the press was also an important milestone, along with commercial agreements and upcoming partnerships (I’ll detail them one by one as they get finalized), we’re getting closer, every day, to a situation where we’re empowered to take on anything we need, and so when something doesn’t properly fit in with our vision of the desktop or doesn’t provide us with a solution to satisfy your needs based on your feedback, replacing it with something that does now gets easier and easier. These are tough times and a lot of really hard work is required, but the challenges ahead are also very exciting, we know exactly what we want to achieve and the support from the community and the media attention we’re getting right now are catalyzing our efforts and making it easier for us to achieve our goals. To all the people who are part of this, I’d like to send a big thank you.

Great to see how well Mint is doing. I just have 1 comment: Next time when mentioning the sponsors and donors, please do not mention the amount of money they donated. As i see the figures starting from 1 Dollar and going up, it almost looks like demeaning the people who donated a lower amount. Don't do that, just mention the persons who donated money and at the bottom it is really okay to mention the total amount of money given by them. To me it really looks demeaning the way it is now.

I'm not surprised seeing Mint on the 1st place on Distrowatch. Many Ubuntu users aren't not happy at all with Unity and are switching to Mint or Debian. Just to be honest, who want's his desktop having look like some touchscreen smartphone/tablet? That's the main reason for a lot of Ubuntu users to switch.

Dear Mank_in,Thanks for your reply. With an expected LM13 release this month, you're probably right about Clem being busy.

I took a look at the sponsors page, and the bar graph goes as recent as Jan 2012, the same extent as the info in this thread. Also, look at the list of sponsors there. It's the same names and amounts as shown in this thread.